We do a lot of that in our program but not exclusively. For instance, for our two months of OB/GYN during intern year, we have OB/GYN attendings that oversee our experience and do the teaching. I think this is great, as our faculty just can't teach OB/GYN issues as in-depth as an MFM (High Risk OB) doc can. The OB/GYN residency here only has three residents per year, for a total of 12. So they are almost always short staffed and really appreciate having the FM interns around to help with deliveries. It's really a win/win situation for both departments. However, all our continuity deliveries are supervised by an FM attending, so we get to learn from our attendings as well. I think it makes for a better overall experience.
For our peds rotation, we do two months of peds inpatient during our intern year. These two months are done at a private children's hospital in our town and all oversight is provided by the Pediatric Hospitalist service at that hospital. We get a great experience there as well. However, the rest of our peds inpatient experience is supervised by our regular FM attendings. There is no peds residency program at either the private hospital or at our University hospital. We also admit some peds cases to our University hospital. At any given time there will be between two to four peds patients on our inpatient census at our university hospital as well. These are followed by our inpatient team that sees both adults and peds cases. We also do a month of peds out-patient with a local pediatrician in second year. In addition, we see quite a few peds patients in our clinic with FM attendings. I'd say a good third or so of my panel of patients are kids.
It just really depends on what you are looking for. If you are the kind of person who wants an unopposed residency at all costs, then you probably won't see the benefit of learning in this manner. However, if you keep an open mind about your learning, you probably can see the benefits of the way our learning experience is designed. There is no right answer either way. Only what you personally see is the best for you. Personally, I think the whole idea of unopposed, while great in theory, will make it difficult to gain some experiences that are only available at tertiary care centers like the one I train at. If you would like more detail, feel free to PM me.
